This is my first devlog, not sure what to talk about. The project is a college assignment where as a team, we are to design and create a game based around the theme "Borders."  

At first, I thought easy-peezy, border crossing, player has to get across the border to rescue/see their family. I started looking for tutorials on guard patrols and vision cones etc. A good few hours soaking it in, waiting for the replies from the team to get the go ahead.  I was then reminded that it might not be a desirable choice in the times we live in. Borders what does it mean, the boundary between two things, the outline of something. For days, I pondered the theme. I had an idea of using lights in a scene to cast shadows on a wall to match an outline highlighted on the wall. The player positions the lights in the level behind objects trying to get the shadows to align with the highlighted border on the wall. A good puzzle but not in my wheelhouse yet, not enough experience with Unity.  

What we finally settled on was an infinite runner, Race for the Border. A take on the police chase, police officers chasing you while you race your car to the border. Why you are running from the police officers, that is none of my business. You do you. I enjoyed playing car games like "BurnOut" where crashing was a mechanic of the game. I would like to implement something similar to our game.  

Now I have three versions in the editor, one that uses a shader material to warp the road ahead, the effect is great and surprised it can be done in Unity. The second uses a script to move the player and camera forward through the level while scene sections spawn in front of the player. This is different to the first, that has the player stationary and moves the road sections toward the player, spawning sections with a trigger box.

The third and my favourite uses a Level Layout Generator to spawn the track ahead. It was a bit of work with the terrain editor, I had to create each section with an entrance and an exit, but with less than 10 sections it can create a track with twists and turns and does not look same same. I did have an inspiration from a project I did in programming, in which I created a car model in blender, and in Processing had it move passed the screen. It was black screen and only the lines of the car model were visible using HSB colours. I like the look and might try adding it to our game.

What for?

As said above, this is a college project. I am new to Unity, but I am picking it up quick. I dabbled in Unreal 4 and loved the Blueprints, so Unity and C#, what a steep learning curve. I am not a programmer, and learning to code is like learning a new language. I was not good at languages. The silver lining is the CoPilot add on for Visual Studio, it is amazing, write in the // comment what you want and BAM, it fills it in for you, lifesaver. The more I see what Unity can do, the more it impresses me. With all these assignments, I always end up with five different prototypes before I finalize one. But I can see that I am learning what bits and bobs from all the prototypes I can use in other projects, a health system here, a UI manager there, I love when a plan comes together.

This is the tutorial that I followed to create the game.

This is the car asset used in the game - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/vehicles/land/arcade-free-racing-car-16...
GitHub Repo - https://github.com/LuckyIRL/GameToolsGame

What is Done?

• Procedural Level Generator
• Player Controller
• Enemy AI (Follow and bump into Player)
• Health System
• Start of UI (Hearts change when hit hazard)
• Level restart 3 hits
• Speed Boost Pickup (Timed boost to speed)

What is Left?

• Paint and Dress Terrain prefabs
• Pickup Spawners
• Checkpoints
• Ramps?
• More Collectables
• End/Win condition?
• Start/End Screen
• Audio
• Menu/Pause Menu